Computers and their application programs are used in all aspects of business, industry and academic endeavors. In recent years there has been a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the Internet. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all aspects of human productivity in the industrialized world requires human/computer interaction. The computer industry has been a force for bringing about great increases in business and industrial productivity. Almost every week seems to bring computer industry advances which promise even further increases in productivity. These advances offer to drive down business and industry costs and increase efficiency, in addition to increasing productivity. In addition, the cost of "computer power" continues to drop as a result of rapid advances in computer related technologies.
Despite all of these advantages, there still remains great resistance in all industries and business fields to new computer systems and significant system upgrades which offer much in productivity increases. This resistance results from past experience which equates to installing new computer systems or significant upgrades in existing systems with large amounts of down time, during which the business, manufacturing facility or individual worker functions are inoperative or operate at diminished levels. When a business or production facility is trying to decide whether to install a new computer system, the concern about down time, the possible loss of business, as well as stress on the workers involved, very often outweighs the cost of the installation in influencing the decision. The concern about business and production delays resulting from installation has become so great that fewer and fewer small businesses are trying to make system and program changes on their own. This concern is much greater when the business is considering the installation of a computer network. While many businesses would likely be much more productive if their computers were interconnected with each other, the thought of a network may be very frightening to many small businesses without too much computer experience. They are likely to consider the concepts to be learned and the technology required to connect two or more computers in a network as too complex, time consuming or error prone to be attempted by the average small business user or owner.
There is a substantial challenge in the installation of computer network systems for small businesses. In this marketplace we are dealing with a group whose available time is being stressed to its limits by the pressures of current economic systems. Even though the network computer systems procurable by these business people may offer eventual salvation to their other business stresses, the prospect of a new computer installation is often quite ominous to them. The above-referenced copending applications: "Configuring Computer Network Operations Based Upon the Correlation of a Sequence of Interactive Display User Entries Apparently Unrelated to Computer Operations", Casey, Dean and Rodriguez, Ser. No. 09/118,208 (Attorney Docket No. AT9-98-239) and "Simplified Setting Up of a Network of a Server Computer Preloaded With All Computer Programs Required by a Group of Client Computers to be Connected Into Network", Casey, Dean and Rodriguez, Ser. 09/118,211 (Attorney Docket No. At9-98-228) both provide computer networks which are very easy to install, operate and upgrade. The networks have a primary server computer on which substantially all software including operating systems to be used by client computers in the network is loaded into and maintained in the server computer storage. This software is then allocated to the client computers according to user needs, distributed to the client computers when called for by particular users and then returned to the server computer where the software is stored. The client computers in the networks have minimal storage capacity, as little is stored at the client computers. In fact, the client computers do not need their own hard disk drives.
In addition, small businesses have been particularly susceptible to the trend away from the traditional office environment where the individual was fixed in his office and conducted substantially all of his business efforts from the office. Because of personnel limitations, small business people are often required to be "Jacks-of-all-Trades" and to "office" anywhere on the fly. Thus, we have the trend away from the fixed office with its stand-alone computer loaded with all of the user's software resources. The small business people would like to have access to the computer at the warehouse, at sales counters, at communication centers or at shipping facilities in addition to their traditional offices. The laptop provides some of this flexibility but it needs to carry along its software resources or else the user will have to get remote access to the software through the a wide area network (WAN) like the Internet or a private network with all of the attendant remote access inconveniences, e.g. sign ons, modems etc.